Studies have shown that extreme restrictive dieting has been directly linked to depression, food anxiety, as well as increasing food focus which leads to your brain perceiving a state of deprivation, which increases food noise, which makes remaining in control of your eating habits a challenge. 

Also, limiting your food intake can also cause uncontrollable hunger, mood fluctuations, and a higher chance of overeating. 

It’s also proven that chronic dieters place unrealistic expectations on their results which lead to them frequently describing feelings of guilt and self-blame, irritation, anxiety, and sadness, as well as fatigue and attention problems. They also constantly feel like failures for “messing up my diet again,” which lowers their self-esteem and makes them feel like they have no control over their eating habits or life in general.

Restrictive dieters are also five times more likely to develop an eating disorder than people who never diet, making extreme dieting particularly troublesome in teens and a significant prelude to disordered eating.

Restrictive dieting can also result in low self-esteem, and increased stress, which can create a vicious cycle of preoccupation and body dissatisfaction, so in order to achieve food and life freedom for life, restrictive dieting in any shape or form is a no-go. 

People that tend to diet also tend to favour diet foods, which are rarely beneficial as they tend to focus on reduced calories rather than nutritional value. This means that the majority of diet foods (especially microwave meals) are processed and contain high amounts of additives and preservatives, and rarely fill you up.

I remember in my slimming club era that the business brought out a range of their own branded microwave meals and sweet bars, and I lived off of them for months as I was convinced by the group’s consultant that this would really help me with portion control. It wasn’t until I began to research nutrition more that I noticed how low their protein and fibre contents were, which are essential nutrients in weight loss. And also how high there sugar, salt and preservative which causes Reward System Dysregulation it intensely stimulates the brain’s reward circuits by releasing dopamine, which over time can lead to addiction-like behaviors, cravings, and a desensitization of the brain’s natural reward responses.

But this is very deliberate. The diet and processed food manufacturers engineer products to be “hyperpalatable”—with specific combinations of fat, sugar, and salt—to stimulate the brain’s reward systems, making them highly desirable and encouraging repeated consumption. This design is primarily driven by the corporate goal of maximizing profit. 

This is why it is important to eat a balanced diet including whole foods and occasional pleasure foods in order to stay in control of your eating habits.

This system includes a nutrition guide that teaches you how to eat not only for weight loss success, but for optimal health and freedom.